The Yellow Cab Man (1950)

Let's be realistic.

Gripping story with well-crafted characters

The biggest problem with this movie is it’s a little better than you think it might be, which somehow makes it worse. As in, it takes itself a bit too seriously, which makes most of the movie feel kind of dull.

It’s sentimental, ridiculously long and only occasionally funny

I had discovered this obscure Red Skelton movie on YouTube recently and just decided to watch it now because of many glowing reviews on this site. In a nutshell, Red is an accident-prone fella who eventually becomes a cab driver after initially being hit by one! He's also an inventor with some crazy contraptions in his apartment. I'll stop there and just say this was very funny from beginning to end. There's an unusual distorted sequence that must have turned some minds on at the time and a hilarious end chase sequence taking place in a demonstration home. So on that note, I highly recommend The Yellow Cab Man. P.S. Since I always like to cite when someone that was in my favorite movie-It's a Wonderful Life-is in something else, here it's Charles Lane-the one who told Mr. Potter he'd one day work for George Bailey-who plays an insurance man who rejects an offer to insure Mr. Skelton!

It's often been said that MGM didn't "get" comedy. And with the scripts they would hand Red, again and again they proved that to be true. They could put really funny things in their forte -- musicals. But it was rare they really understood what makes a great comedy.For a change, here they got it right. I've always thought this to be the best of the Red Skelton comedy films, and my sister would have agreed when she was about 7 years old and we watched this on television. She was in absolute hysterics!But there's more to this film than slapstick (although that's what my sister remembers). Red always had the ability to play pathos, and he does here as the accident-prone inventor of unbreakable glass, which he tries to sell to the Yellow Cab Company, hoping that they will make unbreakable windshields. Of course, with Red being accident prone, his demonstration of his invention is a disaster. It's one mishap after another. But the bad guys are always at hand trying to take advantage. There's Edward Arnold (once a leading man himself), here reduced to a con-man shyster lawyer (but he's so good at it!). Then there's his accomplice -- Walter Slezak, as a crocked psychiatrist...and he leads Red into a fantasy sequence that's genuinely clever, original, and very funny. And then there's the hilarious finale at the Home Show. But what also works in this film is Red's sympathetic performance, silly little bits, and his romantic interest with Gloria DeHaven, who does quite nicely here. And then there's character actors James Gleason and Jay C. Flippen. Yes, MGM got it right this time, and gave Red one of his best roles. One for the DVD shelf! If you only buy one Red Skelton movie on DVD...this is the one!

**SPOILERS** Red Skelton is at his hilarious best as goofy and accident pron inventor Augustus "Red" Pirdy. A man who just can't get, or stay, out of the way of both falling and moving as well as stationary objects. We get to see Red's troubles right at the start of the film as he slips and falls down a fight of stairs as the movie credits are displayed on his body cast at the hospital.It's when Red walking into traffic gets hit by taxi-driver, for the Yellow Cab Co, Mickey Corkins, James Gleason,that his life takes a sudden turn for the better. It's then that Red is given a chance to display his newest invention a sheet of unbreakable glass for automobiles. This has ambulance cashing lawyer Martin Creavy, Edward Arnold, who was at first interested in getting Red to sue the Yellow Cab Co. a bright idea in stealing the patent, which an absent minded Red forgot to file, from him as well as the sheet of glass itself! As things turn it's both Mikey and Yellow Cab insurance adjuster, who was investigating Red's accident, Ellen Goodrich, Gloria DeHaven, who really came to Red's rescue in preventing him from getting involved with shyster Creavy and his crew of crooks that included the fake headshrinker, psychiatrist, and kitchen appliance and carnival barker "Dr."Byron Dokestedder, Walter Slezak.Mickey getting Red a job at the Yellow Cab Co. after he almost brained the company's owner, by demonstrating his unbreakable glass windshield, Person Hendrick-Paul Harvey-turned out to be a stroke of genius on Mickey's part. This in fact gave Red the mobility that he needed to keep his distance from the Greavy Mob. It also got him close to who turned out to be his love interest in the movie pretty Ellen Goodrich. It's when Yellow Cab Co. manager Willis Tomlin, Guy Anderson, who was blackmailed by Greavy to switch Red's unbreakable glass, that resulted in Hendricks getting beaned by Red throwing a baseball at him, was about to spill the beans on him is when things started to get real deadly.All out free for all ending with both Red and Ellen stuck at a local L.A modern house and kitchen exhibit as Creavy and his boys try to do them it as well as steal Red's unbreakable glass formula. In the end Red not only foils Creavy and his gang from getting their hands on his secret formula but gets Dr.Dokestedder to have a taste of his own medicine which he infected on Red all throughout the movie: A hypodermic needle filled with a combination of truth serum and a for-runner to LSD rammed into his big fat butt! This combination chemical cocktail was administrated not by Red or Ellen but by a toaster that fat a** Dokesstedder hid the needle in to keep the police as well as the entire fleet of Yellow Cab drivers, who came to Red and Ellen's rescue, from finding!

Some belly laughs in this Skelton madcap. As usual Red plays a good-hearted schlemiel who stumbles from one mishap to the next, but somehow muddles through to win the girl (Gloria DeHaven) and the climax. Here he's an amateur inventor and Yellow Cab man battling veteran baddies Walter Slezak and Edward Arnold.A great job by the writers. The comedy set-ups are consistently funny and inventive from the mine-field opening of Red walking down the street to the whirlwind close at the L A Home Show . (Forget the muddled story-line which is just a handy post to hang the hi-jinks on.) This was just the kind of slapstick that Skelton could turn into a wild and crazy romp, and he does. .Catch the great comedic architecture in the early sequence that builds hilariously from the baby-sitting beginning to the nine-one-one close. Too bad this kind of engineering has largely disappeared from today's movie screen. Then too, the crib scene with Red playing both his toddler self and infant sister amounts to 60 second knee-slapper.In fact, there are a number of special effects scenes that work up more than a few chuckles. But the North Pole dream has something of a nightmarish undercurrent as does Red's getting shoved into the mixer.I guess my only complaints are the cheapness of the street sets and the dull-grayish quality of the filming (at least, in my copy). Coming from big-budget MGM, such cost-cutters affecting overall quality seem surprising.Nonetheless, this is a fine little post-war flick whose futuristic house at the Home Show expresses something of the surging spirit of a 1950's America then on the economic upswing.